Processing facilities and other entities are often required to perform planning and scheduling operations. Planning and scheduling typically involve sizing, sequencing, assignment, and timing decisions so that ideally specified due-dates and deadlines are satisfied. For example, planning may involve determining a quantity of product to be produced by a specific deadline, while scheduling may involve determining how that product will be produced over time. Many prior approaches have involved the identification of globally optimal solutions to the integration of planning and scheduling problems. However, finding globally optimal solutions is often a complex, computationally intensive, and lengthy task. Also, some of these approaches require excessively restrictive assumptions in order to generate globally optimal solutions.